


put down the knife (i'm too tired to fight)

by Larrant



Category: Beyond Eden (Visual Novel)
Genre: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dom/sub Undertones, Extremely Dubious Consent, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Suicide Attempt, This started as PWP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:35:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29536218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Larrant/pseuds/Larrant
Summary: Alex had promised Joshua his death but, well, Alex never played fair. No — he thinks he’ll keep the Edenic scion, broken and tamed in his bed. It is just as much as he deserves.Set afterEnding Six: Blood Sacrifice.
Relationships: Joshua Edenic/Alex Wake
Kudos: 7





	put down the knife (i'm too tired to fight)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ertal77](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ertal77/gifts).



> **Quick refresher** : Alex asked Joshua for three favours to save his family. Joshua can’t fulfill Alex’s last favour and chooses to die by ingesting poison instead. Of course, Alex was lying about the poison in the first place.
> 
> This is literally 3 years late! Thank you for waiting (ง ´͈౪`͈)ว

Clean out your mouth this is not what it's for,  
There's still a bloodstain from the spill of the war.  
Pick up your sorrow this is not who we are  
I won't cry, uncle having come so far.

**Blood Under The Bridge, Frightened Rabbit**

* * *

_Do you remember when we were children, Joshua? The games we played in the dark. All the faeries come to take us to a moonlit land where you were the prince and I was your gold-glittered knight. Do you remember it. Do you remember us?_

It’s been so many years so _perhaps not_ , but then again — perhaps he would. Ghosts are all memory and the man sitting on the bed is a glorified haunting. Tethered to paling pulse and surfacing only in mirror fragments, in the dead of night of witching hour dark. A _haunting_. This lovely, vacant face but _oh_ , Alex has heard how Joshua screams at night. The nightmares claw-crawling out of his resentful ribs, the hiding places of bone and sinew.

“You lie on this bed as though it is your deathbed.” Alex sighs. His words shiver themselves into nothingness. He plucks a pale foxglove from its vase, twirls the rotting flower between two fingers. “You would desire yourself that fortunate, wouldn’t you?”

Joshua, sickly Joshua, deathly Joshua, does not reply. Does not look at him. The maids tell Alex he has not spoken since the day Lady was shot. Alex raises the foxglove to his nose, inhales an echo of childhood. Its cloying sugar scent, the stem sticky with sap.

"Did your father visit you before his tragic end?” Alex’s tongue darts out and wets his lips. He tilts his head in a smile that waits like a dream; drowsy-eyed, patient. If it’s not a question that requires an answer, he waits anyway. Watches seconds drift in dust. “Was he busy, Joshua? Forever occupied… I understand how it is. An important man always with more paperwork to fill, other important men to see. And then, after darling Jeremy’s death —” there it is, he catches the spasm, the twitch of skin and struggling muscle. The grievous, inconsolable gravity of grief. “Too trapped in his own mourning to pay you any thought. The maids wanted to take you to him, didn’t they? But even at the end your father didn’t want to see you. His timid, pathetic son… Who knew you would be his final, lasting legacy.”

Careless, Alex’s recounting. Deliberate in its scalpel cut of hurt. Idly he drops the foxglove, lets the petals crush beneath his foot. Closes the paltry distance between them with only a step.

Alex raises his hand, palm up and fingers relaxed. Reaches. Cradles Joshua’s pale cheek and watches those pale eyes slide shut, the butterfly flutter of damp lashes.

“I considered putting you out of this misery.” His thumb brushes the line of Joshua’s closed eye. Marvels at the sea-wet that gathers at his touch. “But I’ve grown indecisive. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, yes? And I think… I think I shall do whatever I please with you. I think I am entitled to that.” The expression that twitches at Alex’s mouth is sharper than his words. Even broken, silent Joshua would cower if he could hear it, the oilslick greed in Alex’s belly that hungers Joshua’s name, that says _mine, mine, mine_. But Joshua does not hear it — under his palm, the man is motionless. Helpless Joshua, hopeless, _his_.

Alex kneels easy and graceful, the dust of the carpet nothing to his ten-pound suit. Hand sliding down to grasp Joshua’s slender wrist ( _the creaking bone between his thumb and forefinger, swallow bones, hollow bones_ ) — he bends his head, draws a chaste kiss against cold knuckles.

“I know this place is a corpse to you. It can’t be blamed that you’re sick, living in this rotting skeleton of a home. I’ll take you away from here.” Alex promises it through an inhale, through the soap and floral sweet of Joshua’s skin. Sun-stained and sickly. Is this it? The scent of revenge, satiating the razor-addled animal of Alex’s greed.

He smiles.

_Here we are again, do you see us Joshua? You would if you opened your eyes. The knight and his prince, the knight and his prize. What quest would it be if there was no maid waiting at its end? A fair-haired, lovely-eyed princess to be given alongside the jewels and gold of reward_.

Alex presses another kiss to that fragile skin; it grows open-mouthed, turns filthy. His tongue licks a wet stripe from knuckle to wrist. Open-mouthed, row of teeth that could close around Joshua’s wrist and it would be as easy as a snapping of jaw, the promise of gristle and gore. "It’s alright now,” if his whisper is hoarse with that want, who would judge. “I'll take care of you, Joshua. You’ll return to London with me.”

* * *

In his decade-long absence from Ashgrove Park, memory (darling, fallible memory) had rewritten the estate into a many-mouthed, long-toothed leviathan of horror. The stuff of nightmares, manse anthropomorphised into slavering monster.

But Alex _had_ returned, full-grown and a man, and found the monster to be merely rotted cadaver and maggots gleaming on bone. There was nothing in Ashgrove to frighten him any longer. There had never been anything to fear.

Beyond the carriage window the estate's fields sprawl into the distance. _Oh_ , how imagination would have painted them only months ago. Those poisonous roots squirming deep into acidic earth, tall shadows encroaching on the green. As recollection had been cast out and rewritten ten years ago, so it is cast out and rewritten now. No more the darkness to frighten and daunt, only the shadows his steps cast.

Now, Alex envisages, he sees the truth of things.

His eyes flick to Joshua, seated as sweet and still as a doll. The carriage rocks with every uneven stone but the man makes no complaint. Makes no sound except to breathe — exhales of air as soft as the exhumed dead.

_I’ll give you a choice. You can choose who dies in this family_.

Alex had promised to kill Joshua, he remembers this. But. What are promises to Alex Wake, who has broken every other taboo. What are promises, when the majority of Joshua’s family is already dead and soon to be buried. Some without bodies to bury.

He leans forward, careful not to let the carriage jolt him, tucks a strand of hair behind Joshua’s ear. The man closes his eyes. Alex’s fingers trace the line of Joshua’s forehead, fall lower, soft touches across Joshua's pale cheek. Across the line of a slender cheekbone.

Some part of Alex would have been unsurprised had the porcelain skin under his palm been cold to the touch, if Joshua's flesh was as hard as it was still: a creature chiseled out of marble and stone, the like of Grecian statues and graven sculptures. But his skin is warm instead; when Alex's thumb slides to the catch of his bottom lip and presses, Joshua's lips part with all the blankness, the unseeing obedience of a doll. Perhaps as inanimate.

“I think I want you on your knees now.” Alex’s voice is fond. Joshua, his reaction only tangible through touch, shudders.

* * *

Their return to London is subdued, Joshua Edenic moves in as Alex’s houseguest without fanfare, and proceeds to spend his stay in the city by never leaving the house. Alex, for his part, makes the transition as comfortable as possible: the meals the cook prepares for Joshua follow the same recipes as Ashgrove Park, the upholstery in Joshua’s sleeping quarters has been redone to match his old room.

Contented by this situation, and by the spent body lying at his side, he sits on the edge of the bed and feels pleased enough with his victory to reminisce.

"Do you remember when we were children, Joshua?" He exhales in a daze of smoke. Joshua does not like smoking, yet he has no reaction to it now. Alex raises the cigarette to his lips and lets it hover there. "If we weren’t in an elaborate game of pretend we would be by the stream. The two of us, though sometimes Oscar would join in, yes? If I remember rightly he never wanted to get his feet wet.”

Smoke warms his lungs. Alex’s voice is almost sentimental. “We always had to persuade him for the longest time. Half the time we'd push him in anyway. Now I think of it, we were such nuisances as children.”

Alex glances down. Slides his free hand through Joshua’s hair and pulls him up, ungentle. Indifferent. "I used to think of going back to that time, you know. I used to dream about that stream. Those games we played when we were still children.”

He takes a final drag of his cigarette before placing it on the ashtray. He kisses Joshua with his mouth full of smoke. Holds Joshua to him until the man has inhaled everything. Joshua coughs and Alex lets him break away with tears in his eyes. There’s very little as gratifying as watching the tightness of Joshua’s jaw before it relaxes. The stumbling return to limp stillness.

Alex holds no irritation at the maintained silence. He knows this reticence is not resistance. If anything, Joshua’s muteness is only despair. The way broken animals that howl and howl will trail off, fall into silence when they realize the pain will not end with their howling. All this demonstration of pain, and yet nobody is coming to save them.

Alex knows this look well. After all, how often has he worn it himself — ten years ago, eight years ago, that stretch of meaningless time before he learned to rearrange all the broken pieces in him so they appeared whole to the world. _But oh_ , all the hurt under the surface. A hurt. A haunting.

Joshua is the same. A ghost trapped in his own body, waiting underneath his own skin.

Waiting for someone to make an incision, draw it out. Draw him out.

Alex touches Joshua’s lips. Wonders if the old tales are true; the soul can be hauled out through the mouth. He has so much time to try.

* * *

He should have known better.

* * *

Alex knows that Joshua is not so numbed to the world he will ignore outside stimuli. When food is placed in front of him, he eats. He permits himself to be clothed and changed, led without complaint. On good days, he will sit in the garden with a maid unobtrusive at his side. When Alex holds him down and fucks him, Joshua quakes and trembles as though he is held together by strings — a thousand breaking things come undone inside him. Held together by some fragile shell of flesh.

_He should have known it would not last_. Autumn quivers the leaves red with their brittle age, until they fall like ash outside the window of Alex’s London townhouse. Alex does not know which maid was careless enough to let Joshua attend his breakfast alone — but in the week after, Alex fires them all with the exception of the housekeeper. He’ll find new help. Household staff who won’t be so careless as to lose one of Alex’s most expensive purchases.

Here and now, the evening air of Joshua’s room is thick with dust motes, glistening with light. Sunset filters through the window where it catches in lines on the bedposts, a shelf, the grained wood of a table. Where it strikes the side of Joshua’s face it hides the sicky cant of his skin. Gives it a glow anyone would call ethereal.

“Joshua,” he murmurs, and the man stirs. Alex thumbs Joshua’s pulse, uneven at his throat. Alex knows. He knows he had given the maids strict instructions to keep any medication under lock and key when he was not home. There were few knives left in the house, none in Joshua’s room that he hardly left. Joshua barely needed to shave and when he did Alex did it for him. The maids were meant to attend to Joshua with every meal.

_And regardless of everything_ — the household staff knew what Alex chose to tell them, and they should have felt sorry for the young man who had so recently lost his entire family. They had been informed Joshua was a danger to himself. That he should be supervised at all times.

In other words: it is patently _ludicrous_ that a shattered porcelain teacup was enough to almost — _almost_ let the younger man escape from him. Alex holds in his inhale for two seconds. Five. Ten. He exhales, a stringent calm settling over his shoulders like a shroud.

“Joshua,” Alex repeats. Moves his hand to Joshua’s bandaged arm. The fool is awake, even if he will not respond. Alex digs the tip of his nail into the stitched wound. Is pleased when the body on the bed flinches, jerks with a jagged inhale of breath.

Alex smiles. The irritation is bladed in wait, knives under his tongue. But he can be gentle. He can be soft. “Look at me, Joshua.”

There's no response, nothing but the quivering, uneven breathing of the man on the bed. He lets go of Joshua's wrist, moves his thumb and forefinger to Joshua's chin and wrenches his head up. His eyes are open but there’s nothing in them. Barely focused — deliberately unfocused.

"Joshua," Alex says. "Should I purchase a length of chain and bind you by wrist and ankle to this wall?” He waits with equanimity. “Or should I employ a surgeon and cut the tendons from both your feet. Should I make it that you can only crawl?"

His other hand moves to the red, roped scar invisible under the sheets. He knows where it is. His grip on Joshua’s hip — all bone, hardly any flesh — tightens until the man twitches and loses his composure again, shaking. Clear eyes turned pained, turned to glittering. All the saltsea, sore beneath his lashes. All the tears shed and unshed. Alex’s mouth curls. “Must I cripple you to prevent this meaningless self-flagellation?”

Joshua laughs. Alex’s hand stills.

“You said.” Joshua swallows. Licks his lips, and his voice is rough and raw from disuse. How long has it been since Alex heard him talk? He does not flinch back from the sound. Not even the carrion-eating creature inside him, slavering teeth bared in surprise. Joshua does not see any of this internal conflict. He continues, struggling with every word. “You said you would let me choose.”

His words fade, plaintive into the air. Lost into the light.

Alex blinks, very slowly. His smile is slow too. Creeping. The predator-thing inside him growing lax. Starting to croon.

“I did,” he acknowledges. “Did you think I would keep my word, Joshua? To a son of oathbreakers.” He forces himself to gentle his tone. Drags out a facsimile of compassion, lets it coat his tongue in tender-kind-soft. "You can’t escape. You should know this by now, Joshua. Don't try to run from me again."

He leans down, still gripping Joshua’s chin. His lips brush the edge of Joshua's mouth. "I'll keep you alive until I tire of it. Do you understand me, Joshua?" He lifts his head. Lowers his hand to Joshua’s throat. Then, almost thoughtless, he presses down.

Joshua is silent at first. Carefully indifferent. Carefully still. But the clock continues to tick its composed seconds. Alex’s grip tightens, experimental. He watches Joshua’s fingers start to twitch at his side, start to convulse. Scrabbling at the sheets. He must want to wrench Alex’s grip from his throat. When Joshua’s entire body starts to thrash, throat wildly spasming from the suffocation, Alex lets go.

For a few moments, the only sound in the room is the breath of someone gasping for air.

Alex, ever at repose, waits until Joshua falls quiet once more. He sees that Joshua’s hands are still clenched at his side, shuddering limbs unwilling to cradle his own hurt. Such cracks in his facade. Only little cracks, but Alex has long and lean teeth. Long and lean enough to pry them open. To dig into the fleshy dark inside. He is hungry enough, and patient enough.

He feels such tenderness when he says: “So you won’t die on me will you, Joshua?”

It's not a question. It's not even a request.

* * *

Alex gives it a week before taking Joshua to bed. Gives Joshua enough time to ensure his stitches won’t tear with the slightest stress. He’s so frail after that miserable attempt at suicide. As though even more of his soul has departed his sorry body. Untethered itself and slunk away into dusk — but what does it matter. Joshua will never be light enough to leave him. All the parts he can try to carve out, and yet never enough to float. Such a sorry existence, trapped here by Alex’s avarice.

"You’re just like a doll." The observation is made from a position above Joshua’s naked body. His cool fingers brush down Joshua's throat, over his stuttering heart. "Don’t you want to be kept like one?" Under Alex's palm, his chest shudders with each breath.

"I'll keep you." He assures, palm running lower, caressing Joshua's waist, hip-bone. The scar that runs ugly history over his right leg. "I'm not done with you yet."

The man is silent, though not through stubbornness. Mostly despair. A sigh leaves him as he lifts Joshua's hips. He fucks the younger man slowly, content enough to do most of the work considering Joshua is still in the process of healing. Joshua is crying now, shivering though a ghost-fever seems to run through his cheeks. His body is flushed pink all over, skin hot where Alex touches him. Voiceless though his mouth opens in slow, shuddering gasps. Alex kisses the sea-wet from his eyelashes.

"Don't cry," he murmurs. "We're not done yet."

He looks so terribly frail in the dead-light of the moon. All bird-bones and fragile flesh. He's been growing ever thinner since Alex took him back to London. It only makes him more beautiful. A fae from some ephemeral tale, the kind of creature that you bind to you with blood and iron and still it tries to run.

Sometimes it seems as though he'll break if Alex holds him any tighter. He won't, of course. Everything worth breaking in Joshua is already broken.

* * *

“Is this really alright with you, Alex?”

Alex stops. The corridor was empty. But when Alex turns around, there is a woman standing at the end of it. A beautiful woman, with lustrous black hair and glimmering eyes. Her hands are folded together, slender fingers biting into her own flesh. She is beautiful, and sad.

There had been a whisper of unacknowledged foreboding at Alex Wake’s ear. Nameless until today, nameless until it had a name again.

“Sister.” Alex tilts his head. He watches her eyebrows furrow, watches something unreadable move across her expression. His chest is tight. There is something inside, sharp nails clawing the bone of his rib. It is no bird-thing with feathers. It is nothing that will fly.

“Is it really alright, Alex?”

Alex quashes it. Locks the crawling thing with an inhale, keeps it between rib and diaphragm. “What do you mean, Beth.”

“He’s one of them, isn’t he? An Edenic.” Beth struggles with the word. Repeats it. “An Edenic. You promised me, Alex.”

Beth — her expression is so near to crumbling. He can read it now. She looks so desolate. Alex reaches out but she steps back. She always steps back. He always reaches. “You promised me.”

When the scullery maid finds him five minutes later, Alex is still standing on the spot. Gazing into nothing.

* * *

_You promised me_.

* * *

The person under him is thrashing: Alex understands this in fragments. Comes back to his body not all at once. The room is dark. It must be night. Outside, a sound of carriages. There is someone beneath him. That person is thrashing.

That person is Joshua. There are tears, streaming down his pitiful face. His nails are at Alex’s wrists. There is blood under them. But Joshua has barely been eating, is barely flesh bound to bone — his attempts to dislodge are futile.

Alex, when he realizes this, lets go. He watches Joshua gasp with a voice he does not hear.

After a moment, he hears it again. Alex breathes, strangely calm.

“It’s alright.” He holds Joshua in his arms, dreamlike. He buries the murmur into Joshua’s hair. “You’re only a doll, Joshua. I can break you whenever I want, isn’t that right?”

Out of the corner of his eye, a slender figure in black. Dark hair glowing in the moonlight. Alex closes his eyes. He is in control. He has so much control it hurts his skin where it touches Joshua. “I can kill you whenever I want, isn’t that right?”

Joshua, shaking, does not reply.

* * *

He puts a collar on Joshua because it amuses him. Because it suits Joshua, to be a housepet with a leash. Because it suits Alex to demonstrate his control. Whatever else he cannot control — this, at least. This thing belongs to him. This one person who is wholly in his grasp, under his power.

_Fuck yourself on me_ , he had instructed, leaning back on the divan and watching as Joshua obeyed. Tried to obey. Knees shaking as he lowered himself on Alex’s prick, weak muscles straining to move up and down. He knows full well it is an unreasonable request when one of Joshua’s legs does not even have the power to support his own weight. Joshua has given up by now, sagging in Alex’s arms while Alex leisurely fucks into him. How long has it been? It feels good just staying like this. Whenever his prick starts to soften he rolls his hips and the wet heat around him twitches, Joshua whimpers in a voice so pretty it would burn God with shame.

“You were made for this, weren’t you? Just to warm my cock.” Lazily, he curls his finger beneath the leather of the dog collar. Tugs. Joshua shudders, his insides contracting almost painfully tight. A soft cry leaves him as he climaxes and Alex blinks, perplexment turning to pleasure. He’d barely even touched Joshua’s prick and now the man is slumping, shivering into Alex's hold.

Alex clicks his tongue, sighs into Joshua’s throat. "So filthy,” he whispers, just to feel Joshua’s shudder at the edge of his mouth.

He swipes his fingers through the mess of cum on Joshua’s stomach, raises his hand to Joshua's lips. The younger man shivers again, but his lips part without resistance when Alex presses a thumb against his mouth, obedient as he licks the cum from Alex's fingers. He swallows without needing to be told. Alex pushes harder, presses two fingers into Joshua's mouth until the younger man gags on them, eyes wet with tears that catch in his eyelashes.

"Good boy," Alex says.

_You'd look lovely with a collar_ , he had mused only the week before. It had been a good decision after all, that impulse purchase on the street. Perhaps, he considers, he should have a collar tailored especially for Joshua. A softer leather, better suited to skin rather than animal fur. In a colour matched to Alex’s preference. He smiles. "I'll keep you," he murmurs, and when he looks up there’s a reflection that wasn’t there before in the mirror. Illegible eyes. He doesn't look away.

"How could I ever tire of you, Joshua." He exhales, stroking Joshua's hair with his wet, filthy fingers. Feels the younger man's trembling begin to subside into doll-like passiveness. It makes the brief moments he comes to life even more endearing, ever more enamouring.

"You owe me don't you, Joshua. I'll take everything I'm owed from you."

His gaze meets Beth. He presses his mouth to the top of Joshua’s head, benediction.

* * *

His insomnia has returned with a vengeance. As a result, Alex spends more time watching Joshua sleep than he spends sleeping.

After dark is the only time Joshua comes to life, excepting when Alex fucks him so hard he loses his darling mind. In the black after midnight, listless silence is replaced by a delicate trembling. Joshua is haunted by nightmares that return, perpetual and unquestioning. Night after unending night.

Alex has considered it before: the kind thing to do would be to allow him access to sleeping medication, dosage carefully controlled and monitored. And right now, the kind thing to do would surely be to wake the Edenic. But Alex has forgotten the taste of kindness, much less how to impart it. Even now, sitting up on the bed they share, he watches Joshua struggle and twitch. Watches his mouth open in soundless, breathless gasps. His eyes keep screwing tight, brows furrowing and shifting as though he knows it is a dream, as though he is trying to wake himself through any method possible. Alex, long ago wakened by the disruption, smoothes the hair from his forehead. Watches the sheen of sweat that glitters in the moonlight.

At a full-bodied flinch that quakes the mattress, Alex moves his fingers to Joshua's lips, to the edge of his twitching mouth.

_Father_ , he hears.

Something visceral and vicious blooms in Alex's chest.

Joshua whimpers, tosses and turns. Alex removes his hand before Joshua’s face can smack into it. The man keeps murmuring. Keeps whispering as though he’s pleading. Who is he begging, in this dream? Is it his father? Or is he begging Alex. Alex hopes it’s the latter. Hopes that whatever it is, it ends in pain.

But after a few minutes the nightmare begins to abate. Joshua’s troubled expression grows increasingly lax until he falls into fitful slumber once more — still discomforted, he keeps shifting, keeps twisting from a blow that will never come.

Alex wipes the stray wetness from Joshua's eyes. The tears that had gathered without falling. It’s only three in the morning, still many hours before dawn. How many hours of horrors does Joshua have left to face?

“Alex.”

His head snaps up.

Beth is in front of the bed. Her eyes are lonely. Alex holds his breath between his teeth. “Sister,” he whispers. So softly only a ghost would hear. “It’s alright, sister.”

Beth shakes her head.

“I promise,” he says, his fingers so light, touching Joshua’s hair. “This is part of it. This is our revenge, do you see?”

But he blinks, and Beth is gone.

* * *

The sound of a falling book makes Joshua flinch. He reacts not at all, or he flinches at such little things. Even the opening of a door from downstairs can make him jump. The sound of a poker in the fireplace. The clatter of dishes on a tray.

“What’s wrong?” Alex asks, a smile playing at his lips. He follows Joshua’s gaze, but the man is not fixed on the fallen tome. It’s fixed somewhere closer, and Alex follows it instead to the line of his own shoulder, where his shirt has slid and revealed the roped scar that runs from collarbone to shoulder. Alex raises an eyebrow, bemused, “This?”

Pitiful; there are tears welling in Joshua’s eyes again, falling freely down his cheek. No reason discernable for it. Such a weak, feeble boy. He murmurs as much aloud, and Joshua shakes his head. Shakes his whole body, quaking and quivering prey thing.

Such a poor boy, Alex thinks, in a strange and fey mood. Boy who was left in the woods and lost himself there. He holds Joshua’s head between his palms and kisses his ear, with his tongue runs a lascivious stripe from cheek to throat. Joshua must have followed a trail of pebbles round and luminous as the moon, followed it into the witch’s home. Didn’t they know it already when they were young? There were no happy endings in those tales. The witch cooks the girl because the witch is hungry, the witch doesn’t care if the girl is thin as a reed and more bone than flesh. Bone is better than dirt and marrow is thicker and richer than meat.

Alex licks the tears from Joshua’s face. He thinks, with the taste of salt on his lips: _there is nothing left inside this boy but the sea. Saltwater and sore_.

“So weak,” Alex murmurs. “But I did this to you, didn't I?”

Joshua’s hand twitches. Feeble fingers finding Alex's sleeve — his nails are sharp, raggedly clutching for purchase. Alex does not pry his hand away. The stitches in his arms have been removed now, the skin nearly healed. The scars, the doctor said, will remain.

“Do you want to come?" He asks. Joshua doesn't speak, but a soft whine breaks from his throat. “Not yet,” he kisses the younger man's forehead. “Wait a little longer, hm?” Joshua obeys without thinking, shaking as he holds onto Alex.

“Alex.” The whisper is dyed red with shame, with crying. Alex folds the stutter of surprise into the hand he runs a hand across Joshua's hair.

“What is it, love.” All this weeping, this pearly wet slipping down Joshua's cheeks. Alex has broken something in him and now the crying never stops.

“I'm sorry," Joshua utters, wretched, disconsolate. Even his voice is tearing, crumbling into fragments no hands will catch. “I'm sorry.”

Alex — Alex laughs. He does not know what Joshua is apologizing for. He knows Joshua has earned this punishment a hundred times over, if only by virtue of his name.

“What use is that,” he hums, holds Joshua tenderly. Cruelly. “This is your Hell, Joshua. No apology will change that.” He lets Joshua bury his head in Alex's shoulder. Feels every wracking, soundless sob as it reverberates against his skin. "Hush,” he croons, “It's alright. It's alright."

Alex remembers it out of nowhere, out of the fallen tome of stories lying broken on the floor. The fairytale that started with a little girl. The wolves ate the girl, the hunter split the creature open to find her corpse inside; red flesh, red lips, red cape and all. Did it end like that?

No, the wolf caught the hunter’s axe between its teeth. It ate the hunter, axe and flesh and bone and all. And once the hunter was all gone the wolf bent down and licked and rasped his blood from the floorboards. Licked and rasped until the blood was all gone too. See: a hungry thing is always more dangerous than a well-fed animal, even if that animal holds an axe and walks on two feet.

No. No, that isn’t the tale. The wolf ate the girl. The wolf ate the girl and ran before the hunter could find it. The wolf ran, and ran, and stopped. The wolf looked down to see its belly ripped open and gaping. The wolf ate the girl, and the girl ate the wolf from the inside out. And once the wolf-flesh was finished she licked and slurped the marrow from the cracked bones. And once the marrow was finished she took the bones and crunched them between her teeth like the chocolate chip cookies her grandmother used to bake. And when everything was finished her shiny black hair had turned matted and gray, her pearly white teeth had sharpened long and yellow. The girl looked in a puddle of water. The wolf opened her red, red mouth and howled.

The ending doesn’t matter, the ending is always the same. There is a wolf, and the wolf eats everything.

* * *

“Beth.”

The manor is burning. Ash coats every surface, caking in clumps on his clothes. On his hands. Alex inhales smoke and chokes on it. Beth is here. Beth is so close. He’s reaching for her, he’s running but the end of the corridor will not come. He’s running but there are arms around him, holding him back. Pulling him away.

“Beth!” He cries.

_Alex. Alex_.

He chokes in ash, breathes in ash, there is nothing bright left in this place and the hands around his shoulders are holding him so tight. He thrashes but they don’t let him go. _Beth_ , he cries, except his voice cannot come out. _Beth_.

_Alex_ , they say.

“Alex —”

Alex wakes, gasping into silence. The room is unlit. The lights of midnight London enter through the window. Nothing is burning. Nobody is screaming. He was just asleep. It was just a dream.

He looks at his hands and they are stained yellow by the distant lamplight. He blinks, looks up to realize Joshua is still there, the phantasm of his arms wrapped around Alex’s shoulders. Just an echo. He’s watching Alex with strange eyes. Unreadable eyes.

When did he stop being able to read Joshua. Alex used to be able to. They used to talk without ever talking. Just with eyes, the twitch of a mouth, the barely-there motion of hands holding cutlery at the table. A language Alex has forgotten. Has lost. Childhood colonized, stripped into adulthood. Of course he lost it.

He exhales the ash of the dream from his lips. His thumb brushes Joshua’s cheek. The man holds very still. There is something in his expression he is begging Alex to understand. It is a language Alex has lost his fluency in. Alex does not know how to tell Joshua that. He does not know how.

“What is that look in your eye,” he asks softly. Heart rate slowing. There’s a shudder at the base of his spine. It might be hungry. It might be smiling. It might just be a promise of violence. “You should save it for yourself.”

When he kisses Joshua, he tastes salt.

* * *

He's looking at Alex's shoulder again, eyes fixed on something that does not exist. Gazing into some truth or falsehood beyond their realm. Alex does not know how to bring him back. Alex does not particularly care to.

He’s been coming up with increasingly creative ways of taking Joshua. By this point they've had sex on every other surface in the house — Alex’s staff is tactful, they do not question it. They avert their eyes from the marks that stain Joshua’s skin from neck to wrist, shades of red to purple to the slow-healing of green. It must fill Joshua with shame, to be kept like this in full sight of those around.

Perhaps Alex should take him to an event soon. Let him mingle with his fellow aristocrats and flush with shame from the marks so clear on his throat, from the way his sleeves would hitch up when he danced to reveal the shape of Alex’s fingerprints, brushed in lilac.

Alex sighs. Sinks his teeth into the pale flesh above Joshua’s collarbone. He is in a mood for taunting today. In a mood to watch Joshua tremble from humiliation. So he keeps his voice low. Moves his mouth to Joshua’s ear and breathes it like a secret. “What would the souls of your dead family think, to see you like this.”

The younger man quivers, his insides contracting and for a moment Alex is breathless at the tight heat around him. “Your father would be so disappointed,” he groans. “Watching a man fuck his son like some common whore bought off the street.”

He closes his hand around Joshua’s prick and the man _shudders_. He likes having Joshua like this, sitting on Alex’s cock and struggling to stay upright, to hold his weight in Alex’s lap. “You’d open your legs for anyone, isn’t that right? Moan with anyone’s cock in your arse.”

A cruel twist of his fingers and Joshua is coming, spurting over his palm. Sobbing Alex’s name like a prayer, the vowels catching on his clumsy tongue.

“You’ve done so well,” Alex croons, soft with mocking. Joshua shuts his eyes, spent, but Alex isn’t finished yet. “I think you should see to your master’s release, hm? Move your hips, Joshua.”

He feels the swallow, the bob of Joshua’s adam’s apple. The struggle as he tries.

"I’m tired," Joshua whispers. "I’m tired, Alex."

Alex raises his brow. He wonders if Joshua thinks such words will elicit any breadth of mercy from him. “Do you think that matters?” He asks. He waits a moment, just to watch the struggle. Then he’s lifting Joshua, can feel the exact moment the man relaxes into his hold. He carries Joshua to the bed and climbs atop him.

Joshua shuts his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

He’s gotten so thin, the way he feels in Alex’s arms. His weight like a collection of bones, hollowed by time and hunger. Creaking at the slightest touch. He wonders if Joshua’s bones are screaming, even now. Begging for rest.

He holds Joshua’s wrists above his head, harsh enough to stain.

There is no rest for people like them.

* * *

But you should know where this goes.

* * *

There’s an errand boy waiting for Alex in Mr. Anderson’s foyer, awfully out of place among stag heads and stuffed ferrets — taxidermy; a sadly common pastime of the newly rich. He twists his cap between two hands and tells Alex in struggling vocabulary of a message from his butler, holds out a note that is creased along the middle. Halfway through reading it, Alex departs Mr. Anderson’s home and calls a carriage.

The note, penned by a shaking hand, is ash in his fist.

This morning, it says, Joshua had visited his family’s gravestone in London. After arriving, Lord Edenic had informed his valet he wanted to be alone for a few moments — to pay his respects in solitude. Who knew Lord Edenic had a piece of glass stowed in his clothing. Who knew where he had obtained it. Kept it, waiting for an opportunity. Who would have guessed he would try to commit suicide at his family’s gravestone.

By the time Alex arrives at the clinic, it’s already too late.

He gazes at the body on the bed. The pale lines of an animal corpse that is not Joshua. That could not be. That is.

The doctor excuses himself. Alex is alone in the room. Alex is not alone in the room.

“Did you give it to him?”

Beth watches him from the reflection in the window, green-glittered eyes in the stillness of the dead room. She is silent.

“Did you know?”

His sister closes her eyes, smiling.

Alex steps forward, somehow steady. He wouldn’t know if he wasn’t. He touches Joshua’s closed eyelid. His eyelashes. His nose. His mouth. Just a body. Joshua is gone. Joshua has left.

“It’s done.” Beth says. She sounds happy for the first time in years.

Alex traces the line of Joshua’s cheek. A hundred realizations in a single motion. A hundred realizations that come too late. Only one that matters.

“It’s done, Alex.”

Alex withdraws his hand. He touches the line of his waistcoat. The weight of metal that hangs there. He’s had a habit of keeping it on his person whenever he leaves the house: London, after all, is London, and Alex has made dangerous acquaintances besides. He draws it absentmindedly, checks the barrel. The weightlessness of it in his hand. Alex tests a smile, to see how it fits on his lips. “Yes, it is.”

He feels light. Hollowed of all flesh. Alex feels as though he might finally be able to fly.

He raises the gun.

**Author's Note:**

> There is a Beyond Eden discord you can join [here](https://discord.gg/qnh4gTPHFP)!
> 
> I love kudos and comments (*´∀`*)


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